Actions and Means Involved

EVERGREEN aims at innovating the approach towards plant disease control, reducing or replacing conventional chemical pesticides with environmentally friendly and highly bioactive molecules recovered from agricultural vegetable wastes. The project has a double goal to simultaneously improve the safety profile of plant disease control products for environmental compatibility and to support the sustainability of plant production to pursue cost-effective strategies. The main project actions will:

demonstrate the negative environmental impact of the use of conventional chemical pesticides for the control ofbacterial and nematode diseases of plants.

demonstrate the performances as plant disease control products of the polyphenolic-based molecules extracted from agricultural vegetable wastes, at laboratory, pilot and field scale.

demonstrate the efficiency of tailored formulations of these polyphenolic-based molecules as plant disease control products, to achieve the highest activity on the different plant pathogens.

demonstrate the reliability and the compliance with REACH document of EU legislation of the extraction processes for these polyphenolic-based molecules, from the lab-scale to the kilo-lab scale.

demonstrate the project technical validity for optimising the up-scaling of treatments with the sepolyphenolic-based molecules recovered from agricultural vegetable wastes, from laboratory to pilot scale and to semi-industrial scale.

demonstrate themore efficient and ecotoxicologically compatible profile of these bioactive molecules than conventional pesticides, at laboratory, pilot and field scale.

demonstrate the absence of any side unexpected effect of the bioactive polyphenolic-based molecules on common molecular targets of living organisms, at laboratory, pilot and semi-industrial scale.

demonstrate the absence of any direct or cross-acting selection operated by the bioactive polyphenolic-based molecules towards the emergence of unwanted resistance phenomena in their respect or for conventional pesticides, copper or even antibiotics, at laboratory, pilot and semi-industrial scale.

demonstrate the short term environmental benefits and the economical advantages from the use of polyphenolic-based molecules recovered from agricultural vegetable wastes in the control of biotic plant diseases.

coordinate and manage the project and disseminate the results of the project in view of a wide application of its results within the EU Member States.